Robert Nozick 1

Robert Nozick

Robert Nozick

Born November 16, 1938Brooklyn, New York

Died January 23, 2002 (aged 63)Cambridge, Massachusetts[1]

Era 20th-century philosophy

Region Western philosophy

School Analytic, political

Notable ideas Utility monster, experience machine, justice as property rights, paradox of deontology, entitlement theory, deductive closure

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Robert Nozick (November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American political philosopher,[2] most prominentin the 1970s and 1980s. He was a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for his book Anarchy, State, andUtopia (1974), a libertarian answer to John Rawls' A Theory of Justice (1971). His other work involved decisiontheory and epistemology.

Personal lifeNozick was born in Brooklyn, the son of a Jewish entrepreneur from the Russian shtetl who had been born with thename of Cohen.[3] Nozick was married to the poet Gjertrud Schnackenberg. He died in 2002 after a prolongedstruggle with stomach cancer. He is interred at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Career and worksNozick was educated at Columbia (A.B. 1959, summa cum laude), where he studied with Sidney Morgenbesser, andlater at Princeton (Ph.D. 1963), and Oxford as a Fulbright Scholar (1963–1964).For Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) Nozick received a National Book Award in category Philosophy and Religion.[4] There he argues that a distribution of goods is just if brought about by free exchange among consenting adults from a just starting position, even if large inequalities subsequently emerge from the process. Nozick appealed to the Kantian idea that people should be treated as ends (what he termed 'separateness of persons'), not merely as a means to some other end. Nozick thus challenged the partial conclusion of John Rawls's Second Principle of Justice of his A Theory of Justice, that "social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are to be of greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society." Nozick suggested, as a critique of Rawls and utilitarianism, that the sacrosanctity of life made property rights non-negotiable, such that an individual's personal liberty made state

Robert Nozick 2

policies of redistribution illegitimate. This principle has served as a foundation for many right-libertarian argumentsin modern politics. Anarchy, State and Utopia claims a heritage from John Locke's Second Treatise on Governmentand seeks to ground itself upon a natural law doctrine, but reaches some importantly different conclusions fromLocke himself in several ways. Most controversially, Nozick argued that a consistent upholding of thenon-aggression principle would allow and regard as valid consensual or non-coercive enslavement contracts betweenadults. He rejected the notion of inalienable rights advanced by Locke and most contemporary capitalist-orientedlibertarian academics, writing in Anarchy, State and Utopia that the typical notion of a "free system" would allowadults to voluntarily enter into non-coercive slave contracts.[1][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]

EpistemologyIn Philosophical Explanations (1981), which received the Phi Beta Kappa Society's Ralph Waldo Emerson Award,Nozick provided novel accounts of knowledge, free will, personal identity, the nature of value, and the meaning oflife. He also put forward an epistemological system which attempted to deal with both the Gettier problem and thoseposed by skepticism. This highly influential argument eschewed justification as a necessary requirement forknowledge.[17]

Nozick's Four Conditions for S's knowing that P were:1.1. P is true2.2. S believes that P3.3. If it were the case that (not-P), S would not believe that P4.4. If it were the case that P, S would believe that PNozick's third and fourth conditions are counterfactuals. He called this the "tracking theory" of knowledge. Nozickbelieved the counterfactual conditionals bring out an important aspect of our intuitive grasp of knowledge: For anygiven fact, the believer's method must reliably track the truth despite varying relevant conditions. In this way,Nozick's theory is similar to reliabilism. Due to certain counterexamples that could otherwise be raised against thesecounterfactual conditions, Nozick specified that:1. If P weren’t the case and S were to use M to arrive at a belief whether or not P, then S wouldn’t believe, via M,

that P.2.2. If P were the case and S were to use M to arrive at a belief whether or not P, then S would believe, via M, that P.3.3. [18]

Where M stands for the method by which S came to arrive at a belief whether or not P.

Later booksThe Examined Life (1989), pitched to a broader public, explores love, death, faith, reality, and the meaning of life.According to Stephen Metcalf, Nozick expresses serious misgivings about capitalist libertarianism, going so far as toreject much of the foundations of the theory on the grounds that personal freedom can sometimes only be fullyactualized via a collectivist politics and that wealth is at times justly redistributed via taxation to protect the freedomof the many from the potential tyranny of an overly selfish and powerful few.[19] Nozick suggests that citizensopposed to wealth redistribution that funds programs they object to should be able to opt out by supportingalternative government approved charities with an added 5% surcharge.[20] The Nature of Rationality (1993) presentsa theory of practical reason that attempts to embellish notoriously spartan classical decision theory. Socratic Puzzles(1997) is a collection of papers that range in topic from Ayn Rand and Austrian economics to animal rights, whilehis last production, Invariances (2001), applies insights from physics and biology to questions of objectivity in suchareas as the nature of necessity and moral value.

Robert Nozick 3

UtilitarianismNozick created the thought experiment of the "utility monster" to show that average utilitarianism could lead to asituation where the needs of the vast majority were sacrificed for one individual. He also devised the thoughtexperiment of The Experience Machine in an attempt to show that ethical hedonism was false. Nozick asked us toimagine that "superduper neuropsychologists" have figured out a way to stimulate a person's brain to inducepleasurable experiences.[21] We would not be able to tell that these experiences were not real. He asks us, if we weregiven the choice, would we choose a machine-induced experience of a wonderful life over real life? Nozick says no,then asks whether we have reasons not to plug into the machine and concludes that since it does not seem to berational to plug in, ethical hedonism must be false.

Unusual methodNozick was notable for the exploratory style of his philosophizing and for his methodological ecumenism. Oftencontent to raise tantalizing philosophical possibilities and then leave judgment to the reader, Nozick was also notablefor drawing from literature outside of philosophy (e.g., economics, physics, evolutionary biology).

Bibliography• Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) ISBN 0-631-19780-X• Philosophical Explanations (1981) ISBN 0-19-824672-2• The Examined Life (1989) ISBN 0-671-72501-7• The Nature of Rationality (1993/1995) ISBN 0-691-02096-5• Socratic Puzzles (1997) ISBN 0-674-81653-6• Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World (2001/2003) ISBN 0-674-01245-3

Notes[1] Obituary by The Independent (http:/ / news. independent. co. uk/ people/ obituaries/ article35913. ece)[4] "National Book Awards – 1975" (http:/ / www. nationalbook. org/ nba1975. html). National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-08.[5] Ellerman, David, Translatio versus Concessio: Retrieving the Debate about Contracts of Alienation with an Application to Today’s

Employment Contract (http:/ / ellerman. org/ Davids-Stuff/ Econ& Pol-Econ/ translatio-v-concessio-P-and-S-final. pdf)[6] Obituary by The Guardian (http:/ / www. guardian. co. uk/ obituaries/ story/ 0,3604,639619,00. html)[7] Philosopher Nozick dies at 63 (http:/ / news. harvard. edu/ gazette/ 2002/ 01. 17/ 99-nozick. html) From the Harvard Gazette[8] Robert Nozick Memorial minute (http:/ / www. news. harvard. edu/ gazette/ 2004/ 05. 06/ 18-mm. html)[9] Robert Nozick (1938–2002) (http:/ / www. iep. utm. edu/ n/ nozick. htm) by Edward Feser[10] A summary of the political philosophy of Robert Nozick (http:/ / www. missouri. edu/ ~philrnj/ nozick. html) by R. N. Johnson[11] Robert Nozick, Libertarianism, And Utopia (http:/ / world. std. com/ ~mhuben/ wolff_2. html) by Jonathan Wolff[12] Nozick on Newcomb's Problem and Prisoners' Dilemma (http:/ / www. warwick. ac. uk/ staff/ S. L. Hurley/ papers/ antnpdd. pdf) by S. L.

Hurley[13] Robert Nozick: Against Distributive Justice (http:/ / www. humanities. mq. edu. au/ Ockham/ y64l17. html) by R.J. Kilcullen[14] Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism? (http:/ / www. cato. org/ pubs/ policy_report/ cpr-20n1-1. html) by Robert Nozick[16] Robert Nozick, Philosopher of Liberty (http:/ / www. fee. org/ publications/ the-freeman/ article. asp?aid=4335) by Roderick T. Long[17][17] , ch. 7[18][18] Keith Derose, Solving the Skeptical Problem[19] The Liberty Scam: Why even Robert Nozick, the philosophical father of libertarianism, gave up on the movement he inspired (http:/ / www.

slate. com/ id/ 2297019/ )[20] Nozick, Robert (1989). "The Zigzag of Politics", The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations. Simon & Schuster. ISBN

978-0-671-72501-3[21] , pp. 210–211.

Robert Nozick 4

References• Cohen, G. A. (1995), Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, Oxford UP. A widely-cited criticism of Nozick.• Frankel Paul, Ellen, Fred D. Miller, Jr. and Jeffrey Paul (eds.), (2004) Natural Rights Liberalism from Locke to

Nozick, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-61514-3• Robinson, Dave & Groves, Judy (2003). Introducing Political Philosophy. Icon Books. ISBN 1-84046-450-X.• Schmidtz, David (Editor) (2002), Robert Nozick Contemporary Philosophy in Focus, Cambridge University Press,

ISBN 978-0-521-00671-2• Schaefer, David Lewis (2008) Robert Nozick and the Coast of Utopia (http:/ / www. nysun. com/ sports/

reconsiderations-robert-nozick-and-coast-utopia), The New York Sun, April 30, 2008.• Wolff, Jonathan (1991), Robert Nozick: Property, Justice, and the Minimal State. Polity Press.

External links• Quotations related to Robert Nozick at Wikiquote

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Article Sources and ContributorsRobert Nozick  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=559112081  Contributors: 271828182, 62.78.132.xxx, 62.78.133.xxx, A Kit, AAMiller, AaronJBiterman, AaronY, Abmac,Adam9389, Akiva Quinn, Alai, Anarchia, And we drown, Andres, Anthrophilos, Aprock, Arx Fortis, BD2412, Bender235, Billinghurst, Bjenks, Bo99, Bowei Huang 2, Buridan, CWenger,Carolmooredc, Carolynparrishfan, Causa sui, Centrx, Ceyockey, Charles Matthews, Chinasaur, Christofurio, Church of emacs, Cjs2111, Classicfilms, CommonsDelinker, Conversion script, D.Webb, D6, Dantheman531, Dave-ros, Daykart, Docu, Doprendek, Edward321, Endlessmike 888, Engwar, Eprall, Eranb, Fanyavizuri, ForestDepths, Fpahl, FranksValli, Frappyjohn, Fredrik,Gabbe, Ganixaba, George Richard Leeming, Goethean, Good Olfactory, Graham87, Gregbard, Grunge6910, Hadal, Henry Cassini, Heyitspeter, Hmains, IZAK, InverseHypercube, Inwind,J1.grammar natz, JEN9841, JJARichardson, JakeT218, JamesReyes, Jaufrec, JayJasper, Jimbo Wales, Johnleemk, Johnpacklambert, Joseph Solis in Australia, Jpfagerback, K0hlrabi,Karl-Henner, Kbdank71, Kiril Simeonovski, Kritik44, Ksy92003, Ktr101, LaidOff, Larklight, LaszloWalrus, Lectert, Lee Daniel Crocker, Liam, Lussmu, M3taphysical, MSGJ, Madhava 1947,Magioladitis, Maresuke369, Martarius, Matthew Fennell, Mav, Mdnavman, Meelar, Michael Hardy, Moloch09, Monegasque, Montgolfière, Motion1234, Mporch, MrDolomite, NarSakSasLee,Nate Silva, Natkeeran, Neilc, Neutrality, Nickidewbear, Nigosh, Obrientom1, Omnipaedista, Osterg, P64, Palica, Palthrow, Philebritite, Philwelch, Piet De Pauw, Pjwerner, Polisher of Cobwebs,Poor Yorick, Pterosaur10, Pulpculture, R'n'B, Rami R, Rats, Renata3, Rickburnes, Rlove, Rostz, RyanGerbil10, Ryguasu, Sam Clark, Sardanaphalus, Schmiddy, Schnufflus, Sdorrance, SilentSAM, Simonides, Sir Paul, Skomorokh, Snowded, Srich32977, Steven J. Anderson, Stilgar1898, Supergee, Teknolyze, Tom Morris, Tot12, Tresoldi, User24, Vcelloho, Verzbolovskis,Voiceimitator, W E Hill, Wames, WhiteC, Whosyourjudas, Wik, Will Wilkinson, WillWilkinson, Willwilkinson, Windharp, WojPob, Wolfdog, Woohookitty, Workbrick, Yworo, Zad68,Zenohockey, Zhurnaly, ZoneSeek, ماني, Ὁ οἶστρος, 216 anonymous edits

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